We've been waiting to see actual benchmarks for the AMD Radeon RX 9700 and RX 9700 XT and surprisingly it is today that they've been revealed; traditionally releases have been happening the…
Nvidia and AMD have launched their new graphics cards and we are all set for gaming in 2025, however there have been some shocks along the way. Naturally we expected Nvidia would soak us for a fortune but who would have predicted that Nvidia RTX 50-series would turn out to be an utter disaster? Or that AMD RX 9070 XT looks good? Wow!
00:00 Start
01:19 Unboxing
03:00 The GPU
03:45 The power connectors
06:20 Reasons why
06:35 Missing ROPS – Nvidia reply
08:15 Decision was made easy for Leo
I was so confident that Nvidia's new GPUs would be great that I placed my order for an RTX 5080 Founders Edition before Jensen took to the CES stage for his keynote address, and by the time he finsihed speaking I knew I had made the correct decision. By contrast AMD mucked things up by delaying their launch of RX 9070 XT and that made me sad.
Once the Nvidia reviews started to flow I had to rethink my position. Nvidia 50-series delivered less performance than I expected, despite the huge power draw, and we had reports of melting 12V 2×6 power connectors and chips that were missing ROPs. In the blink of an eye I cancelled my unfulfilled order – availability of Nvidia graphics sucks, hard – and ordered a PowerColor RX 9070 XT Red Devil 16GB Limited Edition instead.
KitGuru says: Nvidia has run into a series of problems with RTX 50-series while AMD RX 9070 XT looks like a winner
AMD has finally, officially announced their next generation RDNA4 architecture and the products that will be utilizing the Navi 48 chip. It has been a bit of a roller coaster for those…
Almost announced at CES 2025, later pre-announced, announced, and now launching, it's time for RDNA 4! And the new Radeon RX 9070 Series is everything AMD needed to do to finally start…
Officially announced – at long last! – in a livestreamed event last week, AMD's RDNA 4 architecture is here with the RX 9070 XT leading the charge. Landing with a $599 MSRP, this GPU is firmly targeting Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti, with AMD promising compelling rasterisation performance alongside huge improvements to ray tracing. FSR 4 also touts significant image quality improvements thanks to its new ML-powered algorithm, so on paper AMD looks to have ticked all the boxes. But how does that translate into the real world experience? We find out today…
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:41 Recap and spec overview
01:48 Test setup
03:02 Alan Wake 2
03:41 Black Myth: Wukong
04:11 Cyberpunk 2077
04:14 Final Fantasy XVI
05:14 Forza Horizon 5
05:47 Ghost of Tsushima
06:21 Horizon Forbidden West
06:54 The Last of Us Part 1
07:20 Plague Tale: Requiem
07:42 Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
08:09 Starfield
08:36 Total War: Warhammer III
08:55 12-game average results
10:57 Cost per frame analysis
11:55 RT Alan Wake II
12:28 RT Black Myth: Wukong
12:57 RT Cyberpunk 2077
13:19 RT F1 24
13:40 RT Ratchet & Clank
14:00 RT Returnal
14:12 RT Shadow of the Tomb Raider
14:23 RT Star Wars Outlaws
14:43 RT 8-game average
15:18 FSR 4 analysis
18:56 Meet the Sapphire Pulse & ASRock Taichi
20:19 Thermals and acoustics
21:24 Power draw and efficiency
23:18 Closing thoughts
In lieu of an official AMD reference (or MBA) card, today we are using the ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi for our testing. This card does come factory overclocked when using the default Gaming BIOS, but I did all my testing with the Quiet BIOS that runs at reference specifications.
It's also worth noting that while this is a standalone review for the RX 9070 XT, we do have a day one review for the RX 9070 (non-XT), and you can find that HERE.
RX 9070 XT
RX 9070
RX 7900 GRE
RX 7800 XT
RX 7700 XT
Architecture
RDNA 4
RDNA 4
RDNA 3
RDNA 3
RDNA 3
Manufacturing Process
TSMC N4
TSMC N4
TSMC N5 GCD + N6 MCD
TSMC N5 GCD + N6 MCD
TSMC N5 GCD + N6 MCD
Transistor Count
53.9 billion
53.9 billion
57.7 billion
28.1 billion
28.1 billion
Die Size
357 mm²
357 mm²
300 mm² GCD
220 mm² MCD
200 mm² GCD
150 mm² MCD
200 mm² GCD
150 mm² MCD
Compute Units
64
56
80
60
54
Ray Accelerators
64
56
80
60
54
Stream Processors
4096
3584
5120
3840
3456
Game GPU Clock
2400 MHz
2070 MHz
1880 MHz
2124 MHz
2171 MHz
Boost GPU Clock
Up to 2970 MHz
Up to 2520 MHz
Up to 2245 MHz
Up to 2430 MHz
Up to 2544 MHz
ROPs
128
128
192
96
96
AMD Infinity Cache
64MB
64MB
64MB
64MB
48MB
Memory
16GB GDDR6
16GB GDDR6
16GB GDDR6
16GB GDDR6
12GB GDDR6
Memory Data Rate
20 Gbps
20 Gbps
18 Gbps
19.5 Gbps
18 Gbps
Memory Bandwidth
645 GB/s
645 GB/s
576 GB/s
624 GB/s
432 GB/s
Memory Interface
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
256-bit
192-bit
Board Power
304W
220W
260 W
263W
245W
First, let's take a quick look at the specs. The RX 9070 XT is built on the new Navi 48 die, measuring 357mm², and it's worth pointing out this is a monolithic chip, so AMD is not using a chiplet-based design as per RDNA 3. In total, Navi 48 silicon packs in 53.9 billion transistors.
As a full implementation of Navi 48, the RX 9070 XT packs in 64 Compute Units, and each CU houses 64 Steam Processors, for a total of 4096 shaders. There's also 64 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 128 ROPs.
As for clock speed, the RX 9070 XT runs notably faster than its sibling, the RX 9070, given it sports a rated game clock of 2400MHz and a boost clock of up to 2970MHz.
The memory configuration is the same between both GPUs though, with 16GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 20Gbps, operating over a 256-bit memory interface, for total memory bandwidth of 645 GB/s. 64MB of Infinity Cache is also present.
Power draw for the RX 9070 XT rated at 304W Total Board Power (TBP), but we are using our updated GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.
In a YouTube presentation this morning, AMD at last revealed more details - including the all-important MSRPs - about the Radeon RX 9070 Series, which are being released on March 6. And…